In Loving Memory: Joey Kohut

It’s been a couple of weeks since Eddie “The Editor” Chops contacted me to let me know La Palabra was going back into print, and that I could write about anything I wanted to. I was psyched to hear it and excited at the prospect of another dozen or so people trying to decipher my ramblings. But here we are less than a week before the deadline, and I’ve got nothing. I’ve been having trouble getting ambitious about much of anything as of late. For those of you who don’t know my cousin, former band mate and longtime best friend Joey Kohut died in early June during the zine’s sabbatical. His years of alcohol abuse had caused him to have seizures on a pretty regular basis that were eventually fatal. Now I’m not here to demonize alcohol (it’d be career suicide in a zine whose board of directors is largely comprised of a group called The Somerville Town Drunks) I’m here to point out that there’s really something to the theory of drinking being a serious problem when you do it alone too often. Those who knew Joey prior to his reclusive last few years knew a fun loving, confident, dynamic little imp of a man who while very much an instigator would happily offer whatever assistance he could to friends and strangers alike. He threw all of himself into everything he did. Sadly that last part remained very true with his drinking. It began as with many of our peers in high school as a rebellious thing. In the beginning the goal is to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible preferably for as little money as possible. Eventually the connoisseurs learn what they like and what they don’t and only go with the former. As crazy as it sounds they might even moderate their intake and savor things. But Joey was always “all or nothing” and looked at such things as half-assing it. In many facets of his life this mindset was admirable, but when pertaining to his love of straight vodka it was not conducive to longevity. When he and I first became enthralled with punk rock and ska followed very shortly by learning about the existence of the local scene it provided us with all of the excitement and catharsis we needed. Our fascinations with the genre and the culture seemed to be focused on different features of it. While I was more into the camaraderie and the actual creative output Joey seemed much more interested in the chaos and the rebellion. Binge drinking was definitely idealized among the factions who focused more on that particular element of things. When the passions for the music and culture were combined with the drinking Joey’s outlook on attending shows gradually shifted. They started out being expressly about the music. Shortly after that it remained mostly about that with the added incentive of being able to get drunk before, during or after the show. Somewhere a little further in those last two parts were reversed and shows became a place to drink with the added incentive of seeing bands. Not much longer after that he decided he’d cut out the show part entirely and just focus on the drinking. The money spent on gas and the cover charge seemed better suited for purchasing alcohol and holing up in his room. Readers if you take anything from this please avoid that path. Everybody’s got their vices, and that’s fine, but don’t live solely to feed said addiction. I was told this was a double issue, and that I could contribute two articles if I saw fit. This more melancholy offering was to mourn the death of my cousin by circumstance and friend by choice while the second one is about celebrating his life.

Joseph Walter Kohut was born January 25, 1983 in Flagstaff, Arizona. I was born six months prior. My mother and I flew out to visit my newborn cousin and his parents, but for obvious reasons I don’t remember this trip. Somewhere shortly after this they all moved back to Jersey where both of their families lived. Many of my earliest memories of family outside of my parents are of bonding with the cousin of mine I was closest in age with at our grandfather’s house. However since we were both only children and not accustomed to having to share anything be it toys or attention we didn’t much care for each other in these earlier years and would often fight. I don’t remember when Joey’s parents divorced, but it was definitely sometime prior to his being old enough to attend school. After that my parents always tried to include him in things we did as a family and in time we grew closer. As my father would make me mixtapes of songs he thought I’d enjoy from his records I’d copy them for Joey, so we bonded predominantly over music since well before either of us took up an instrument, but once I got my first guitar and he quickly followed suit we became pretty much inseparable. We’d each boast at our respective middle schools to our classmates about the band we were in with our awesome cousin despite minor details like not even knowing basic chords yet or not having a drummer. In the years that followed we got better and had been in actual full bands together from 1996-2008. Somewhere closer to the beginning of that time we became aware of the local punk and ska scene and quickly switched over from ripping off Nirvana style riffs to trying our damndest to write punk rock. Shortly after the turn of the century he realized he was much better at drums than guitar. For as close as we were and for all the common interests we had we were also very different. Joey was fearless and indestructible when it came to anything on wheels. From what I’ve heard from mutual friends of ours that went to school with him he also didn’t seem to be messed with much as he seemed to know from much earlier on not to show any sort of reaction to douchebags trying to get a rise out of him. He also from his youngest days on through his last years never grew out of his love for any toy that transformed from one thing to another, anything pertaining to martial arts, horror movies or weapons. In 1998 he was the first of us to chop the long grunge hair we both had into a mohawk. He shaved my first one in for me the following year. He also lacked any sort of fear/level of caution for handling animals domestic or otherwise. Part of me always laughs thinking of how he should have parlayed that into a career as one of those animal experts you see on talk shows just without the knowledge they exhibit just him being like “umm yeah this is an alligator. They hate when you taunt them like this”. One of an infinite amount of fond memories I have of him involves a trip we took to Merrill Park nearby his house where we often grew up killing time looking at the various animals. One of the small turkeys got loose, and he just scooped it up without any hesitation and walked around carrying it for a while. The turkey seemed oddly at ease with this. Joey’s summation “yeah he’s chill. He’s just like “hey what’s up? I’m a turkey”. After he returned the bird to the proper side of its enclosure he wanted to playfight. He fancied himself a master of several forms of martial arts despite having only seen movies as opposed to taking any kind of formal lessons. His usual go-to style was drunken fist as he’d seen Jackie Chan’s “Legend Of Drunken Master” a few dozen times too many. I, who actually had taken karate for a few years from elementary school into my early teens, would humor him and impress people watching by being surprisingly nimble and flexible for a fat guy. This particular bout however ended with me splitting my pants when trying to perform some kind of head level kick. He was both a blood relative and my best friend, and the world will forever be a much lamer place without him. IN LOVING MEMORY OF JOSEPH KOHUT 1983-2011.